


Safe and Sound

by POPP_Writing_Group



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alien Biology, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, I Made Myself Cry, I didn't know how the arrow worked when I wrote this, I feel so bad, No Yaka, Ravagers - Freeform, Slavery, So it's all wrong, Space Pirates, Yondu Origin, Yondu Whump, poor baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-03-08 14:18:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13460025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/POPP_Writing_Group/pseuds/POPP_Writing_Group
Summary: “Kree always have good stuff ‘round their experimentation sites,” Stakar answered, picking up a heavy blaster and climbing into the cockpit of his favorite ship.  “We’ll take what we can find, I reckon.  All ships,” he shouted into a comm on the control panel, “land on the moon and steal what ya can.  If any Kree get in your way, kill ‘em.  And. . . “ he hesitated, and the first mate’s eyes widened in surprise as he continued, “if you come across one of their test subjects, put the poor bugger out of its misery.  Gentle like, hear?  Captain out.”





	Safe and Sound

**Author's Note:**

> Written by: Kayla

“Ya feel like busting up some Kree today?” Stakar asked in his lazy, mumbling way.  The rest of his crew knew that it hadn’t actually been a question-- they were right outside the moon where the Kree conducted their experiments.  They were  _ there _ to “bust up some Kree”.  But they responded as enthusiastically as if he had suggested it without any previous knowledge.

“What do you reckon we’ll do there, anyhow, Captain?” Stakar’s first mate asked amidst the general roar of Ravagers gathering weapons and boarding ships.  “Think there’ll be anything good to steal?”

“Kree always have good stuff ‘round their experimentation sites,” Stakar answered, picking up a heavy blaster and climbing into the cockpit of his favorite ship.  “We’ll take what we can find, I reckon.  All ships,” he shouted into a comm on the control panel, “land on the moon and steal what ya can.  If any Kree get in your way, kill ‘em.  And. . . “ he hesitated, and the first mate’s eyes widened in surprise as he continued, “if you come across one of their test subjects, put the poor bugger out of its misery.  Gentle like, hear?  Captain out.”

The first mate closed the cockpit door.  “What was that about, Captain?”

Stakar sighed.  “Kree like to experiment on livin’ beings-- not animals, y’see, but  _ people.   _ If  they were anyplace else than here, I’d free ‘em, but. . . the moon we’re goin’ to is where they do their most inhumane work.  No, if we find one of ‘em, it’s best to end their suffering then and there.”

“Yes, Captain,” the first mate responded, then flicked the controls needed to ignite the engine.  They lifted off.  

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_ “That was your last chance, slave!” the Kree bellows, standing over the body hunched in the rain, arms still out to protect itself.  “You’re going to the Worra Moon!” _

_ A sick feeling, a feeling that spells out things worse than the twenty years a slave he’s spent-- his entire life-- gathers in the young Centaurian’s gut.  “Please, Master, no,” he begs, using the hated word he swore to use as little as possible.  “Please, give me another chance!” _

_ “Silence!” the Kree snaps, kicking him harshly.  But he can’t restrain himself.  He hears his voice, broken and hoarse, pleading out things he thought he’d never say, begging things, pitiful things, as if a minute of servility will make up for twenty years of rebellion.  A lifetime that has rewarded him with this.  A death sentence. _

_ “No!” he screams, as rough arms pick him up and drag him toward the ship.  He fights back, but one malnourished Centaurian is no match for three strong Kree slavers, and when one of them jabs a stick sizzling with electricity into his temple, his vision first goes fuzzy with agony and then black with the uneasy sleep of the doomed. _

 

          -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

“This one’s interesting.”

“A wonderful specimen, if a bit thin.”

“The fin!  Look at the fin!”

He hears these words, these sentences, but he cannot comprehend them.  He becomes aware, first, of the pain.  On the side of his head, on his wrists and ankles.  Then, with his increasing awareness, the sharp, white light stabbing through his eyelids and into his brain, jolting him awake.

He gasps and jerks his eyes open.  He is lying on his back on a cold white table, his wrists and ankles restrained-- completely naked.  As soon as he recognizes this fact, he tries to determine, with a sense of panic, if he’s still wearing the arrowhead necklace he’s worn all his life.  It was the only talisman he had of his parents who had sold him as a baby.  He doesn’t know why he’s held onto it, but it was the only reminder he had of people who may have, once, cared for him.  

But it’s not there.  He closes his eyes, considers weeping.  He’s rarely done so before, as a slave-- even as a child.  Slaves, even children learn quickly that it’s better to survive than to cry.  But now that all hope is lost, now that he is doomed, surely they will not begrudge him a few tears.  

But before he can begin-- and he had not been sure the tears would come even if he had tried-- he hears the voices again.  

“But will the shock kill him?  We don’t have another Centaurian here.”

“He’s a strong, young one!  I say we take the risk.”

“I suppose, I suppose. . . and if he does end up dying, we can always put the project on hold until we can find another Centaurian.”

“We won’t find another one like this in a hurry, that’s for sure.  This is the ideal age, the ideal condition-- everything.”

_ Never ask questions.  Never speak out of turn.   _ These are the rules he’s lived with his entire life.  But what more can they do to him if he breaks them now-- now that he is doomed?

“What are you going to do to me?” he asks, surprised at how normal his voice sounds. 

“He’s talking now,” a voice says.  “We can begin the removal.”

“Prepare the station,” a second voice commands, and hands grab him and lift him up from the table.  Before he can react, he’s pulled to his feet, his hands are chained on either side of his head, and his ankles are fastened to bars near the ground.  He’s standing up, but unable to move.  Now all his fatalistic thoughts race from his brain and he cries out in terror, “What are you going to do to me?!”

The Kree standing in front of him scans his body with a handheld device from the front, the sides, and the back.  Another, behind him, tugs on the red fin on his head, and he flinches as the hand moves down the fin to the part extending from his neck and back.  

“The span is incredible,” he hears the Kree behind him say.  “Just think, if we had gotten a child or older adult, it would not have been this big.”

“What are we going to implant it in?” the Kree in front of him asks.  

“Centaurian fins,” says the scientist behind him, “are the most delicate part of their bodies.”  A hand jerks on his fin harshly and he gasps.  The Kree continues, “We would have to implant it in a being strong enough to handle the extra sensory overload.”

“And the cybernetic replacement for this one?” the scientist in front of him says.  “Will he be able to handle the change?”

“We’ll see,” the Kree behind him responds with a chuckle.  

_ No, no, no.  No, no, no.  No. . . _

“Prepare forceps!” the Kree behind him calls.

He feels a pair of heavy, metal-feeling pressure points on either side of his fin squeeze shut tight around it.  He grunts in panic, finally realizing what it was they were going to do to him, and pulls against the restraints on his hands.  “Stop!  No, no, please!”

The forceps  _ pull.   _ He hears ripping, feels unimaginable pain-- but only for a tortuous moment.  He slumps in his chains, unconscious.

 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

He wakes on the table again, unrestrained this time.  It’s the pain on his head that wakes him-- pain on his head and his neck and his back.  Pain in the long line where his fin should be.  Where his fin  _ had been. _

When he puts his hand up to his head-- for how could he stop himself from doing that-- all he feels is a hard, raised ridge running from the top of his head to just above his forehead.  It’s strange and terrifyingly unfamiliar.  His fin, the tall, soft, sensitive thing that ran from his forehead to his lower back-- is gone.  Is  _ gone. _

He feels the loss as keenly as if they had ripped out his heart. 

“Quick.  He’s awake.  Chain him up again.”

He doesn’t resist.  He hangs limply in the chains, standing up just enough to relieve the pressure on his wrists.  A Kree stands in front of him, but he doesn’t look at the Kree, at anything.  He can’t.

“Listen to me,  _ Centaurian.”   _ The Kree spits out the name like refuse.  “We have improved you.  You have in place of your inferior  _ natural  _ fin a cybernetic one of incredible potential.”

. . . His fin.  They ripped it out.

The Kree keeps talking.  “You were a battle slave, yes?  A battle slave sent here, to be experimented on until your death.  But I have saved you!”

. . . Gone.  A metal  _ thing  _ in its place.

“Once you have mastered the weapon I have put in you, you can return to your masters-- a valuable asset.”  The Kree touches the whip scars on his back, carefully skirting the fresh opening where his fin had been.  “No more of  _ these.  _  You could be an honored slave, useful!  See what I have done for you, Centaurian?”

When he doesn’t answer, the Kree becomes angry.  Striking him across the face, the Kree snarls, “Look at me.  Watch me.”

He lifts his head up listlessly and looks at the Kree, who is turning to pick something up from a box.  When the object is held in front of his eyes, he recognizes it as an arrow.  

The Kree begins talking again, rapidly explaining how the new cybernetic fin they had implanted in him allowed him to control the arrow to his wishes.

“We have not yet had a chance to test this,” the Kree says, his eyes eager with anticipation.  “Try to control it.  Use your mind to. . . tell the arrow what to do.”

He turns his head away from the arrow.  He wants nothing to do with something they took his fin from him for.

He sees the Kree snarl with rage out of the corner of his eye, and then his body is racked with electricity radiating out from the taser the Kree shoves in his stomach.  He can’t help but scream.  The Kree lets him for a few seconds, then jerks the taser away.  “Filth!  You will do as I command!  I gave you a gift and you spit on it, you worthless slave!”

Breathing heavily, almost sobbing, he focuses on the arrow with blurred vision and thinks,  _ Work.  Work.  Work.   _ He imagines the arrow flying into the Kree’s heart.  He stares at it until his eyes hurt from the strain, but the arrow doesn’t so much as quiver.  

The Kree glances from the arrow to his intensely focused face, expectant.  

He closes his eyes.  Squeezing them shut, he pictures the arrow hovering, flying.  He tries to funnel his thoughts toward the arrow.  Nothing has the least effect on it.

The Kree holds the arrow in front of him a second longer, then sets it down and turns away to confer with the other scientists.  

The arrow sits there motionless.  Rebellious.  He grins slightly despite his pain.  So this thing was supposed to replace his fin?  

“You’re a terrible replacement,” he whispers to the arrow.  Then he pauses.  He had been trying to control the arrow with his brain, but what if that wasn’t how it was supposed to be controlled at all?  What if he used what he had felt with his natural fin?  What if he used his heart?

He takes a deep breath and  _ feels.   _ He lifts up his chin and closes his eyes.  After a moment, he is acutely aware of a connection between his new fin and the arrow.  A connection that, if used right, could possibly help him control the arrow.  

But it’s not enough.  It needs something else, something. . . audible to strengthen the connection enough to control the arrow.  

He doesn’t know how he knows this.  It just comes to him as he closes his eyes and reaches out toward the arrow with his heart.  As he does so, he realizes what it is he needs to do.

Putting his lips together, he whistles, soft and low.  

The arrow glows red, a vibrant, waking-up red. 

He whistles a little louder.

The arrow lifts off of the ground.

He whistles again, and the arrow moves in a circle in the air.  He can feel the connection now stronger than ever, and he gives a piercing, loud whistle, using his teeth.  The arrow zooms around the room, past the Kree scientists, and back to its place.

Now the Kree turn around and look at him.  The main one who had spoken to him before registers what’s happening first.  Seeing the hovering arrow in front of the young Centaurian makes the Kree’s eyes widen, first in delight as he realizes how to make the arrow work, and then in fear as he realizes that the Centaurian knows how to make the arrow work.

He whistles sharply, the arrow flips around and speeds toward the Kree, and he feels the impact of his first kill in his cybernetic fin as the arrow slices through the Kree’s chest in a heartbeat.

 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Stakar shot a charging Kree with his blaster-- once, twice, three times before it stopped advancing toward him.  He walked over to it and shot it in the head for the death stroke, noticing as he did so the lab coat it wore with bloody scissors still in the front pocket.  He shook his head in disgust and motioned the three Ravagers with him to each search a building unit.  He took the one directly opposite him.

Walking up to the door, he saw a label on it that described the type of subject in there and what the Kree were doing to it.  This label said “Centaurian Young Adult Male; Fin Removal and Replacement”.

Stakar shook his head in angry revulsion and pushed the door open, ready to kill some Kree.  

He was not prepared for the sight that awaited him inside.  Dead Kree bodies lay draped everywhere, puncture wounds on their chests, their heads, their throats.  A glowing red arrow lay on the ground.  

“What the heck,” Stakar said softly.  He knelt to pick up the arrow.  Its tip was encrusted with blood.

A groan alerted him to the fact that there was someone alive in the room.  He spun around, his blaster out and ready, but it wasn’t a Kree.  It was a young, blue Centaurian, chained to a holding station and naked from head to toe.  He sagged in his restraints as if his legs couldn’t hold him up any longer.

Stakar scrambled to his feet and hurried over.  The Centaurian watched him warily, and Stakar noticed his lips were pursed as if he were about to whistle.  Stakar didn’t know what he was doing, but he did know no one should have to be chained like that for as long as he obviously had been.

“Where are the keys?” he asked.  “Do you know?”

The Centaurian hesitated, then nodded toward a Kree who had more puncture marks than the rest.  “He has them in his hand.”

Stakar glanced at the young Centaurian sideways, then walked toward the body.  “You kill these guys?”

The Centaurian closed his eyes.  “Yes.”

“Good.  How?”

There was a sharp, humorless laugh from behind Stakar.  “I’m not sure I know for sure.”

Stakar grabbed the keys from the body, then after a moment, unceremoniously tugged the pants off of the body, too.  He unlocked the shackles and tossed the pants at the now-freed prisoner, who almost didn’t catch them, he was rubbing his wrists so much.  “I’m guessing the arrow has something to do with it?  How’d ya control it without--”

“Hang on,” the Centaurian interrupted.  “Why are you helping me?  What are you going to do with me?”

Stakar took in the Centaurian at a glance.  The most noticeable thing about him was the open gash running down his neck and back in a long line, and the raised, orange ridge standing out on the top of his head.  Stakar knew Centaurians had large, red, organic fins, so this was most likely a replacement-- for what, Stakar didn’t want to think about.  He looked at the defensive way the Centaurian held himself, the whip scars curling around his shoulders, and his scared but defiant eyes.  A slave, then.  A battle slave, probably.  Sent here to die for some offense.  He probably thought Stakar would either hand him back to the Kree or take him for himself.

Stakar sighed.  He was about to disobey his own orders.  Again.  How was he going to explain this to the crew?

“Well,” he said, “I was thinkin’ of offering you a job.”

The young Centaurian’s eyes widened.

“A place on my crew.  How would you like to be a Ravager?”

“A. . . Ravager?”

“It’s hard, but fun,” Stakar said with a grin.  “We steal from everybody, but not from each other.  We’re thieves, but we’re honorable thieves.  If you join us, you could leave this life behind you.”

The Centaurian hesitated for a moment, then took in a breath and whistled sharply.  The arrow on the floor came flying toward him, and he caught it.  

“I’m in,” he said.

Stakar nodded.  “What’s your name?”

“Yondu Udonta.”

“Welcome aboard, Yondu,” Stakar said.  “You’ll find you’ve just been freed. . . in a lot of ways.”

As they turned to walk out, Stakar noticed an arrowhead necklace in one of the shelves.  He pulled it out and held it up.  “This yours?”

Yondu looked at it, then back to Stakar, and shook his head.  “I don’t need it anymore,” he said.

And so they left.


End file.
